Dinner and a Movie or Two

We’re not Super Bowlers.   We’re old movie fans.  While 1.6 million Americans watched the Saints and the Colts kick a funny lookin’ punkin up and down the cow pasture (you really must hear Andy Griffith’s hilarious monologue on football), Barb and I enjoyed a five-buck Hot n’ Ready from Little Caesars and DINNER AT EIGHT.   Made in 1933, directed by George Cukor, it featured screen greats John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Marie Dressler, Jean Harlow, Wallace Beery, Jean Harlow, and Billie Burke.  This was a rare gathering of talent.  It was a comedy-drama centered around the plans of Billie Burke’s social-climber to give a dinner party for a famous English couple.  Though much talked about, we never see that couple.  In fact, they cancel out on Billie to go to Florida.  Throughout the day, we follow the lives of the various other couples invited to the soiree, being treated to some of the best acting of the era.  We watch Burke throw a hissy fit over the frustration of her plans, see married couple Harlow and Beery trade threats and insults just shy of actual blows, witness the great Barrymore playing essentially himself, a has-been silent-era actor, drinking and blustering through his decline.  My favorite of them all was Marie Dressler, playing an aging, but still vivacious former stage actress.  She gets some of the best lines, including the last one in the picture, spoken to Jean Harlow.  Harlow’s sexy, ditzy platinum blond has startled the older actress, telling her that she’d been reading a book:  
 
Harlow:  It’s all about civilization or something. A nutty kind of a book. Do you know that the guy says that machinery is going to take the place of every profession? 
 
Dressler:  Oh, my dear, that’s something you need never worry about. 
 
We both enjoyed this one. 
 
Following DINNER, we put in dessert–the Little Rascals.  I dozed off on it, but awoke to Barb laughing at the gang–Buckwheat, Alfalfa, and Spanky–in bed together.  She had me rewind it so I could watch the scene wherein Buckwheat, who’s using a hot water bottle for his tummy ache, falls asleep.   The bottle opens, gushing water onto his bedmates.  Each one wakes in turn, wide-eyed, looking back at the other.  Nobody had to say what he was thinking.  That’s what tickled Barb–and me. 
 
Not long after that we went to bed too.  Thankfully, there were no accidents in the night.